


It's out of my hands

by inkbert



Series: Here I am, and I stand [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Asgard, Bird Bros - Freeform, F/M, Long Distance Wooing, Long-Distance Relationship, News Media, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Politics, SCIENCE!, Social Media, Talk Shows, badass Darcy Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 06:26:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6969847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkbert/pseuds/inkbert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's reputation isn't for nothing. The lady killer one, not the murder machine one. Maybe killer isn't the best word? Whatever. He's not making it easy for Darcy to stay unattached as he tries to win her back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. September 20th, 2016

**Author's Note:**

> I would describe my feelings following posting Here I stand as panicked glee. And I pretty much haven't come down from teeter tottering between those two. Thanks to everyone who commented, it was a wonderful welcome to posting my fics.
> 
> This fic is still from Darcy's point of view. The song? Not so much. 
> 
> Shameless - Billy Joel

Well I'm shameless when it comes to loving you  
I'd do anything you want me to  
I'd do anything at all

September 20, 2016

 

“Is that for Darcy?”

“Guys, c’mon.” Bucky says, looking past the camera. He rolls his eyes and a second later Sam and Clint’s big heads are blocking Darcy’s view.

“Darcy! Come to New York, I found the _best_ Lebanese place.” Clint says, way too close to the camera so that for a second she only sees one gray-blue eye. There are groans in the background as Clint steps back, waggling his brows at her, then Sam pushes him out of the way.

“Get out of here, fool.” Sam looks back at the camera and does a slow, seductive smile. When he speaks again, his voice is much lower. “Hello, Darcy.”

“Alright, alright.” Bucky’s voice comes from behind Sam.

“Ow! You fucking kicked me!” Sam wobbles out of view, one hand clamped to his thigh, but Darcy can still hear him. “I’m telling Steve, he said no more Avenger on Avenger violence this trip! Steve!”

Bucky lifts a supremely unimpressed brow. Then he looks back to the camera and he smiles. “Hey doll. Figured you missed seeing my face as much as I’m missing seein’ yours.”

“Anyway, we’re going dark again pretty soon, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum wasted most of my time. Just wanted to check in, leave you a message while I could.”

“Are you talking to Darcy?” Thor’s voice comes from off screen and Bucky drops his head back in annoyance.

“And we’re going dark in five, four...” Bucky trails off as Thor steps in front of the camera, his chest plate taking up the entire screen.

“Darcy, tell Jane-“

The screen goes black.

“Well, they seem okay.” Jane says, holding her giant mug of coffee.

“Yeah. Hey, Jane, Thor says he loves you and is counting the days until his eyes rest upon your beautiful visage again, or something like that.”

Jane sighs, her eyes going a little gooey. Because that totally is something that Thor would say.

Darcy goes back to her inbox and clicks the other message, this one having been sent four hours after the video message. It’s an email.

_Hey doll, we’ve got another few minutes of airtime here. Didn’t get to say much on that last message. Wanted you to know that we’ll be done here sometime late tomorrow. Won’t be able to talk before then. Can’t wait to get out of here – sand feels like it’s part of me. Plus I can only take so much Tony. Piet would be going nuts._

_Sunsets aren’t bad though. Would be better next to the ocean, with you and a cooler of beer. Nat let me fly us most of the way here, and I landed the jet. Pretty soon, I’ll be able to take it out on my own. Clint wants to run me through a few more combat sims first._

_Oh, and don’t go to the Lebanese place with Clint. Four out of five Avengers agree that it’s an effective laxative._

_Gotta go now, wish I’d been able to catch you awake but I’m glad you two are getting some sleep. Talk to you soon, dollface._

Darcy reads back over the message, finishing her coffee. Jane is getting started in the lab, turning machines on, checking the readings from the night before. It gives Darcy a few more minutes, and she watches the video again.

She hasn’t seen him since Colorado. They’d parted ways after brunch, exchanging a friendly hug in a line of friendly hugs as everyone set off. Boarding a small plane with Jane, she’d been convinced this little experiment would be over in weeks.

Leaving Denver she had absolutely no plans to be in the same zip code as him any time in the near future – it was straight up self preservation. She had a talk with the UN coming up, she’d been invited mainly as a ploy to get Thor to attend, but she'd planned to grab that microphone with both hands. Simultaneously blowing their socks off and making them regret the day they ever heard the name Darcy Lewis. She’d finishing her degree in mechanical engineering (and she was done, so done with school after that, hand to mew-mew). She and Jane had to meet an October 3rd publishing deadline. She planned to be so busy, she wouldn't even have time to think about him.

Only, she’d gotten her first text from him within the hour, a picture of Steve sleeping on Tony’s jet, tipped over so his head rested in Natasha’s lap. Natasha is turned, looking out the window, her fingers curled into Steve’s hair.

In the following months, it was rare a day passed without at least a text. She got pictures of his daily life, everything from the morning fog hanging over his running path in the park to Clint’s booby-trapped cereal. She got phone calls where he filled in any awkward lags on her end with chat about what was going on with everyone, what he thought about a new movie, what music he was listening to. He sent her playlists, GIFs, and clips from late night TV.

She gets flowers every few weeks, and then she has to look up the meanings because he knows that shit and sends her messages. But different sources assign different meanings, and he’ll never tell her which of her guesses is right. She always picks the most outlandish. Most of the time, the flowers come with a little note.

Bucky knows how to woo. Most of the notes are sweet and honest and make Darcy smile and feel good. Some of them are just a touch naughty, and damn did those make her feel good too.

But he knows how to walk the line. He never pushes, never pressures her. He’s flirtatious and charming and witty. He makes her feel wanted and special, without ever trying to get her to agree to more. Even if she can tell sometimes, when they’re getting ready to hang up, that there’s more he’d like to say.

And he always holds back. He drops hints about missions that would make it easy to swing by Baja, but lets it go when she lets those hints fly right over her head.

There’s a ping from her phone, her sleek, shiny new phone, an early graduation present from Tony, and she reaches for it wondering if he’d really sent her something else. He must be bored as shit.

It’s a reminder about the photographers from _California Conservation_ coming at one to take pictures of Jane and Darcy. It supposed to be all about the desert flats, but the magazine is totally wanting to cash in on Darcy and Jane’s steadily increasing notoriety following Jane being awarded a Nobel Prize.

Filled with dread, Darcy checks the time.

“Jane! Find pants!”


	2. December 21st, 2016

And I'm standing here for all the world to see  
There ain't that much left of me  
That has very far to fall

December 21st, 2016

“Winning her over?” The interviewer asks in teasing disbelief.

“Yeah. Not afraid of a little work, ‘specially if it’s for somethin’ worth it.” Bucky is on the set of the Today Show, and behind him is the glass wall where the crowds are holding up signs. Most of them are Avengers themed.

“He’s making the rest of us look bad, that’s what he’s doing.” Sam says, sitting next to Bucky on the little interview couch. He’s cradling the Falcon action figure the show had left on the couch. “She sent him that ugly ass sweater – oops, sorry ma’am, - and he’s wearing it on national TV.”

“Don’t diss the sweater. It lights up, see?” Bucky presses the little button sewn into the hem and the lights start to flash. He shakes his head with a grin that’s equally delighted and baffled.

“I think it’s romantic.” The interviewer gushes, and the in-house crowd cheers. Darcy can’t feel so bad, sitting in her nana’s living room, for falling head over heels for the man. The rest of the world has too. “So, any special holiday plans for your lady?”

“Nah, she’s gone home to be with her family, and I’m here with mine.”

“You mean the Avengers?” The interviewer clarifies. Darcy rolls her eyes, hard. What do they think? That Bucky’s going to drive out to the cemetery and spend Christmas there?

“Yeah, we’re mostly all here.” Sam watches the sweater out of the corner of his eye for a second, then turns back to the interviewer. “Thor and Jane went to Asgard, but Pep’s flying in tonight I think.”

“Is he gonna be wearing that sweater with the rest of us next year, Darcy-girl?” Uncle Nate asks, darting a glance in towards the kitchen where his brother is cooking before sneaking another chocolate off the candy tray. He will totally blame Darcy for it when Uncle Bing accuses him, and Bing will get distracted claiming no, he doesn’t count the candies.

“Don’t push the girl.” Rose Lewis, Darcy’s grandmother and biggest fan, slaps her brother’s arm, not looking away from the television.

Lewises have worn aggressively festive sweaters at Christmas for as long as Darcy can remember. There are pictures of her as a toddler in sweaters with glittering puffs of snow and mirrored beads topping elf shoes and embroidered text bubbles making gloriously terrible puns.

It had made her feel good to send Bucky the sweater, but she hadn’t thought that she’d see him wearing it. Certainly not on national television as he told the world there was someone special.

She’d been stealth gifting him for a while. It helps with the overwhelming urge she has to fly across the country and jump him, and maybe get some of that breakfast he’d promised her. She’s just not ready for that, so instead, she sends him meaningful gifts that aren’t easily identified as meaningful.

A start of the Jasmine plant that she’s carried ever since she left home. Which itself had been a start from the plant her father had grown in his garden, which had been Darcy’s playground growing up.

The playlist of songs that she’d always thought she’d have playing at her wedding.

Another playlist, one filled with songs that reminded her of him, all jangling and soulful and sexy at once. It had been one of his favorite playlists, but she’d kept her mouth shut. There had been times the playlist had been Darcy’s do-not-playlist. There had been other times she’d listened to it for cathartic reasons, as she tried to say goodbye. And there had been times she’d tortured herself with it. Just like him, she’d never been able to get rid of it, and she still liked it.

And now, a Lewis Christmas sweater.

“Anything you want to say to your special lady?” The interviewer asks, milking it for all it’s worth.

“I’ll say something for him, mmmmpphhh.” Sam is cut off by Bucky’s hand clamping over his mouth. And America is treated to the sight of the Falcon trying to squirm out of the Winter Soldier’s grip, as the Solider smirks down at him while in a light-up Christmas sweater.

“He just licked me.” Bucky says. “Like that’s gonna do anything for him. I was covered in alien goo last week. Strategy, Wilson.”

The camera zooms in on Bucky’s face as he grins at Sam’s muffled and imperceptible objections, and Bucky notices. He winks.

“Well.” Rose fans herself with a couch pillow.

Yeah, same Nana. Same.

“You missed Darcy’s young man, Bing.” Nate calls into the kitchen.

“He’s on the television all the time! I’m not worried about that, what I’m worried about are my souffles.” Bing answers, and Darcy tips her head back against the couch. She doesn’t bother to correct them. Surrounded by her family, the people who raised her since she was six, and feeling her heart teeter on that edge. The edge of full-blown love.

The white Christmas tree is the same one that has been set up in the corner of the living room since Darcy was a baby pulling the shiny ornaments off, the butterfly dinner trays are hidden between the back of the couch and the wall, and Bing’s ceramic Westie, named Lucille, still crouches underneath the pink armchair. It’s steadying being home, staying up late playing card games in the kitchen, smelling her Nana’s detergent on the sheets in her bedroom, and walking past the veritable shrine to her that has overtaken both sides of the hallway.

There are pictures of pudgy baby Darcy, of Nate at her second grade career day, of all of her graduations. (The familial pride peaks in the picture taken after Darcy got her Doctorate. They all thought it was funny to look underwhelmed in the more recent one after her degree in Mechanical Engineering. Even Jane and Thor got in on it. At least Tony had been excited.)

“Okay, that’s all we have time for today. Thanks for coming, guys, and Merry Christmas.” The interviewer says, directing a perfect smile at the camera as the show’s theme music begins to play over a preview of what’s to come, which includes the perfect turkey baster, a chat with Michael Hillend about just how they get all those floats inflated for the parade, and maybe even a visit with Santa.

Darcy pulls out her phone to see what the internet’s reaction to that is, heading to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee before the olds switch to decaf.

She’s barely got a peak at the tweets when a text message pops up on her screen, from Bucky.

_Hope that was okay._

Darcy shrugs, pouring creamer into her mug. They’d never agreed to hiding anything, and while she can’t really stick a label on it, they’re certainly something. They text everyday, Skype every couple of days, and Darcy has gotten pretty acquainted with the postman what with all the boxes they send back and forth.

_Send me more of those chocolate covered espresso beans and we’re cool._

His response comes immediately. _Done. But you’ve got a problem._

“Who are you texting?” Rose is opening the blinds, letting the morning sunlight flood the kitchen. Now Darcy can see the numerous brightly colored bird feeders hung just outside the window. “Is it Anthony? We had a nice chat last week.”

Darcy can’t help but snicker. Her nana loves Tony, and Tony is totally baffled but pleased by it. He’s always on his best behavior, and lets her call him Anthony and at Darcy’s graduation, Rose totally pinched his cheek. Plus he answers when she calls him to check in on him and see how he's doing.

“Always with the texting.” Bing shakes his head at the state of Darcy’s generation as he pulls the souffles out. Darcy stows her phone and prepares to settle in for breakfast. “What happened to actually talking to people is what I want to know.”

“Oh, Bing, stop.” Rose rolls her eyes, reaching out to pat Darcy’s hand. Darcy leans into her, relishing being home again.


	3. January 12th, 2017

You know I'm not a man who has ever been  
Insecure about the world I've been living in  
I don't break easy, I have my pride  
But if you need to be satisfied

January 12th, 2017

While the Avengers attend the gala commemorating the Battle of New York, Darcy and Jane are settling into their new lab digs on Mauna Kea. She’s pretty cool with living on a dormant volcano in Hawaii. And the telescope? If you’d have asked her ten years ago if she’d flip her shit over a telescope, she’d have pointed out that it’s not nice to ask random strangers on the street questions. But also, no, she would not have cared about a telescope. 

So she’s possibly molesting the telescope with Jane, but also glued to her phone because Bucky is keeping her in the loop. 

Darcy had gotten a slew of messages and pictures tonight as the Avengers got ready. At this point it’s part fundraiser part NYC rally. 

Bucky had sent pictures of Wanda helping Pietro with his cuff links. Tony and Steve sharing a drink in the lounge, both dressed to the nines but not wearing their shoes yet. Steve and Natasha holding hands in the limo. Wanda holding out Dorito dust covered fingers far away from her blush pink dress. And lastly, a selfie of Bucky in his tux. 

Thor had sent Jane a video of him singing a victory ballad with Sam (in the bathroom? Maybe for acoustics?), and also a lovely video of the inside of his pocket.

Now she’s watching the coverage online. The red carpet had been graced by many of the celebrities that call New York City home, but had gone nuts when Steve and Natasha stepped out of the limo.

The questions are NYC-themed, and interviewers know from past experience that most others will be ignored. So Steve says his favorite food truck is Alberto’s on Seventh. That he loves the new art installation in Central Park. Nat praises the Mets, making Steve wince, and talks about how much she and Steve enjoyed a concert in Madison Square Garden. 

Clint talks up his favorite local coffee roaster. Wanda is all about a new Eastern European restaurant. Pepper and Tony name drop the shop where he bought her Valentine’s chocolates. Pietro flirts with all of the reporters relentlessly, never once answering an actual question, but totally flustering Roger Wilkes from Society! to the point that the man matches his raspberry pink bow tie. 

Bucky talks about the spirit of the city. How it’s stubborn, loyal, never gonna back down, do it it’s own way. How much he loves it, how glad he is that New York didn’t change, because it feels like home. 

“You didn’t bring a date?” An intrepid reporter asks, tipping his mic towards Bucky.

“I’m puttin’ in the leg work.” Bucky answers, tipping his head at something beyond the camera, maybe the crowd yelling his name. 

“Still?” 

Bucky’s eyes return to the reporter. “Still?”

“It’s just it’s pretty public now. You don’t feel like she’s leaving you out to dry with everyone watching?”

“One,” Bucky says as Wanda and Clint stop next to him, “It’s a woman’s prerogative when and where and why she does something, and it ain’t up to me or anyone else to get turned around by it. Ya think she’s not worth the effort, seems to me she was right in puttin’ ya through the paces to weed ya out.”

“Did you get him started?” Clint asks, resting his chin on Wanda’s shoulder. His hair is already messed up. Natasha says he can stay all prettied up on assignments, but apparently that’s an Agent Barton skill Clint doesn’t bother to carry over to his personal time.

“Two,” Bucky continues, ignoring Clint, “What do I have to hide? That I’ve met a woman who’s worth it? That I have feelings for her? I’ve been through hell, had to fight to stand here bein’ my own man. I know who I am, I know what I want, and I know what’s important. Some perception of pride? As she would say, fuck that noise.”

“I’m pretty sure Pepper told us not to curse.” Clint’s bow tie is already undone, and he’s fidgeting with the button at his collar. 

“’m from Brooklyn. Fuck is a necessary verb.” Bucky grins at the camera, like he knows the viewers all agree with him. “So, yeah, still. Now. Next month. Next year. I’ll show up at these events alone ‘cause I’m just fine with saving her a place until I’ve said I love her enough, proved it to her enough, that she’s standing here next to me without a single doubt in her mind.”

“So. Did I tell you guys about the coffee yet?” Clint asks, smiling as he tosses his cuff links from hand to hand.


	4. February 4th, 2017

I'm shameless, baby I don't have a prayer  
Anytime I see you standing there  
I go down upon my knees

February 4th, 2017

“Hey, gorgeous girl.” Darcy looks up, seeing the Skype call had finally connected. It’s their first since the Gala interview, because she’d needed a little space after _that_.

Not that she’d said as much. But Bucky had seemed to realize, and his texts and phone calls had all been easy and light.

“Hi.” Darcy feels nervous. She hates feeling nervous. It’s not like her, but apparently Bucky turns her into a different person. She doesn’t know how to tell him that she just wants to feel like herself again. Especially without seeing that disappointed look in his eyes that he’ll try to hide from her.

“Good to see your face. Been stuck here with Barton for two weeks.”

“Yeah, those pictures with the Eiffel Tower in the background look awful.” Darcy teases. She reaches for her water bottle and one of the journals she’d been reading slides to the floor. She casts it an annoyed look. Who even only publishes in print anymore? Why is that a thing?

“See you’re in New York.”

Because yeah, he follows her on Twitter. His feed has over a million followers, so he doesn’t ever directly tweet her, but a lot of times his tags include #doll.

“Yeah, we were flying commercial and there was something wrong. They landed in Philadelphia for repairs, and we had a six hour delay. Nat flew Thor down to pick us up, and we’re flying out tomorrow afternoon.”

“Headed to Cape Canaveral, right?” He asks, eyes flashing with something that Darcy doesn’t want to identify. New York feels like his city, and she’d felt strange flying in, especially knowing that she would have made other arrangements if he’d been in town.

“Yeah, part of the press tour we agreed to. We’ll stay there for the next two weeks before we leave. It’s not announced, but Thor’s going to come down with us.” Darcy smiles a little. “You know how much he loves the space program.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Bucky asks. He’s sitting in a forest green arm chair, and there’s a bright blue wall behind him. He and Clint are staying at Natasha’s apartment, and from what Darcy has seen, she wants to visit badly.

“I’ll send you a shirt.” Darcy promises, because as big of a fan of the space program as Thor is, Bucky is a bigger one. He’d read science fiction novels like crazy growing up, and he’s continually amazed that humans walked on the moon, that they keep launching themselves into space. Propelled by explosions, Darcy, he’ll tell her with wide eyes. He’s a total fanboy for astronauts, follows the NASA twitter, and watches the launch feeds. (Darcy has seriously begun to suspect that NASA has an intern somewhere specifically tasked with answering Bucky’s tweeted questions, since he has such a large following and shares every tweet posted on launch days.)

“You stayin’ in your suite?” His eyes flick around her.

Darcy looks around at the strangely half empty place. “Yeah. I didn’t realize how much I left in here.”

She’s tempted to show him the picture she’d found tacked into the mirror of her vanity. It’s of them together up in the suite he used to share with Steve. Darcy’s holding a plate of food, and Bucky’s arm is draped over her shoulders. It’s from four years ago, his hair is still the Hydra special, and Darcy’s face is a bit rounder.

She’d loved that picture. It had been her phone background for months. It’s not an especially good picture of either of them, but it’s a picture of them together, damned hard to come by, and is very possibly the only picture in existence of them touching each other, much less looking like a couple.

She doesn’t show him though, because it drags them into the land of ‘us’. Darcy can’t handle ‘us’, especially not when she’s back in her old suite for the first time in years, sitting on the couch they’d made out on, and wearing a pair of his sweatpants she’d found in her dresser. Not that he knows that.

“You ready for your trip?”

“According to the US government I’ll never be ready. You should see the list of vaccinations they sent me.” Darcy isn’t even kidding. “Did you know they wanted to upgrade my passport? That’s part of the reason we’re stopping at the Kennedy Space Center. I’m signing some of the same paperwork astronauts do.”

“Doll, ya gotta stop talking about the space center when I’m stuck here watching Barton eat more crepes than should be humanly possible.”

“Did you see the ones he put pop rocks on top of?” Darcy asks, and laughs at his shudder. “He posted it and it’s totally trending.”

They talk for a while longer, until Darcy’s fighting yawns every few minutes, and then sign off. Words knot up in her throat as she gets ready to end the call, but she can’t get them out.

When the screen goes dark she feels bereft and lonely without him. But she also still feels uneasy and awkward. She loves him. She does.

But she can’t get back on track. Every time she’s on the phone with him or Skyping, she’s filled with nerves, second guessing everything she says even as it tumbles from her mouth.

That’s not her. It’s not who she is. She’s brash and happy and blunt. She’s confident and proud of herself and strong.

She’s worried the second she gives in, the second she goes back to him, she’ll lose herself again. She’d spent two years rebuilding herself, and the only time the cracks show is when she’s talking to him.

Standing up to Congress when they try to say she’s not fit to be Earth’s ambassador to Asgard? She fucking rocks their socks off. Speaking in front of the American Science Academy? Dude, they still don’t know what hit them.

She’s Darcy Lewis, doctor of astrophysics, epic best friend and science sister to Jane, lightning sister to Thor, and awesome human being in general.

But when she’s talking to Bucky? Or hell, thinking about Bucky?

She’s that girl who couldn’t get out of bed for weeks after he left her. She’s that girl that cried like someone had died when the first pictures of him on a date hit the web. She’s two steps away from being that girl who’d spent six months in therapy before she felt comfortable setting foot in New York again.


	5. February 26th, 2017

And I'm changing, I swore I'd never compromise  
But you convinced me otherwise  
I'll do anything you please

February 26th, 2017

“You’re feeling okay?” He asks, on her screen she sees him leaning over his phone. His shoulders hunch, and his hair dangles around his face.

“I’m fine.” Darcy promises. She doesn’t actually feel fine. She feels like shit, but it has nothing to with stepping onto the rainbow bridge later today. 

It has to do with the fact that Bucky is in New York alone, because the rest of the team had come down to see them off. And she’d asked him not to come.

“Okay.” He nods, still watching her closely. “Well, just remember to be careful. Don’t let anyone push you around. There’s no one like you on Earth, and I’d feel safe in betting that’s true of the rest of the universe.”

Darcy swallows, pretending to see something past her phone. “Buck, I gotta go.”

“Alright, doll.” He watches her, eyes practically glowing, but mouth clamped shut. It doesn’t matter. Lately, she can read it in everything he does, in every look, every expression. What he wants to say. What he won’t say, because she’s asked him not to.

“See ya on the other side.” Darcy quips halfheartedly, then flicks the end call button. The other side? Ugh.

She collapses back onto the stiff couch in the Space Center guest lounge. She has to figure this out. She can see she’s hurting him. 

They can’t keep doing this.

“Jane said you would like this.”

Darcy manages to bite back the stream of inventive cruse words because she’s been working on that ever since she stubbed her toe in front of the Prime Minister. But only just barely. “Pietro. A little warning would be nice.”

He shrugs, unconcerned, and holds out one of two white and blue to-go cups.

“I love Jane.” Darcy says after she pries off the lid and finds what smells like a caramel latte. “And you, buddy.”

Pietro drops onto the couch to sit next to her with a grunt. “You were talking to Bucky.”

Darcy kicks him lightly in the side of the leg. “Do you want to lose Darcy privileges?”

Pietro’s smile is smug. “Natasha can’t catch me.”

She still hasn’t decided if Pietro is brave or just stupidly reckless. But she likes Pietro, for how hyperactive his power makes him he’s surprisingly chill. Natasha is all about people keeping their noses out of the whole clusterfuck between Darcy and Bucky.

Seriously, Darcy hasn’t been in a room alone with Steve in months. Apparently he can’t stop himself from being Bucky’s wingman, and had been shipping Bucky and Darcy ever since they broke up. 

Natasha thinks Darcy needs space to make up her own mind, and that Bucky needs to prove himself on his own without a second super soldier stepping in. It means lots of quelling looks from Natasha and Steve mutinously pouting. Natasha is also running interference with Sam, who pretty much lives to be a pain in Bucky’s ass.

“Besides,” Pietro says, nudging her knee with his own as he slumps further down against the couch, standing his coffee cup up on his chest, “You’re leaving for three months.”

“Point.”

“Relationships are hard.” Pietro says after a few minutes of drinking their coffee in a comfortable silence.

Darcy snorts and turns to express her disbelief that his attempt at this was that cliched, but stops at the look on his face. 

“Spies everywhere, Tony with his AI recording everything, trying to - how do you say - trying to navigate this new thing, and then there’s a mission and it feels like everything has changed while you were away.” He does this face shrug thing he can do, pursing his lips. “I am not so sure it is worth it.”

“Pietro.” Darcy cocks her head. “You’ve met someone.”

“Psh.” He drums his fingers on the couch cushion. “I knew this person before, so no, I have not met someone.”

“Do you want to talk about-“

“Darcy!” Thor smiles at her. “Your presence is required outside. Jane’s passions do not appeal to our current company. I fear the man has succumbed to sleep.”

“The vice president.” Sam breaks in. “She talked the vice president to sleep.”

Darcy tosses back the last of her coffee and lets Thor pull her to her feet. “At least it wasn’t the president?”

“Oh no, he ran as soon as she started talking refraction lenses.” Sam looks towards the window, eyes distant. “Not that it looked like running. That man is smooth.”


	6. March 14th, 2017

You see in all my life I've never found  
What I couldn't resist, what I couldn't turn down  
I could walk away from anyone I ever knew  
But I can't walk away from you

March 14th, 2017

 

On Bucky’s birthday Darcy is on Asgard. She knows it says something about her, that she’d been able to go to his birthday parties when they were broken up and seeing him was awful at first, and now that he wants her there, now that she’d be welcomed with open arms, she can’t muster the courage.

No, having a good excuse to miss his birthday had not been the main reason, or even one of the top reasons, that Darcy had agreed to go to Asgard with Jane for three months as an Ambassador for Earth.

But it had entered her mind, a fact which Darcy has been mildly ashamed about since it happened. 

Her standard go-to strategy for dealing with this – with her heart having the survival instincts of, well, Steve – is to be as busy as possible. Pining for Bucky after their break-up had certainly been good for her scientist street-cred.

School had been a welcome avalanche of deadlines and assignments. The harder the syllabi looked, the more into it Darcy had been. Fuck yes, bury her in work. Most people can’t take that many credit hours at once? Where does she sign? 

Now she’s in Asgard and she’s got so many agendas it’s not even funny. Jane is on the all-science all the time package, but Darcy has diplomatic missions to complete. 

She’d spent months meeting with government leaders from around the world, she’d gotten very familiar with a lot of faces at the UN, and in general she’d had her head so stuffed full of instructions that there shouldn’t be room for anything else. 

Darcy has gifts from Earth. So many gifts. Some are supposed to go to Odin directly, but others are meant to be displayed for all of Asgard. After Thor had assured the UN that it would be well accepted, months of deliberation had begun on what should be included. Every single item had been debated ad nauseam, both in the various counsels and in the news media. Songs, pictures, movies, theorems, cultures, maps, everything.

People worried about giving the wrong impression. Should pop drivel be included? What will it say about their morals? Should they present a strong, united front or a realistic picture of a planet learning and growing and still finding it’s way as a global community? 

What about betraying their weaknesses? They’d sent up images of DNA in the Voyager Golden Records, but there’s no way that was flying now. 

When she talks with Odin she has to dance a fine line. Her political theory classes are really paying off. 

Thor seems to think Darcy could do all of this with one hand tied behind her back and dominating Candy Crush with the other, and that’s a whole other layer of pressure. Cause the whole Earth is counting on her and everyone is watching. Including a lot of people that both want and expect her to fail. She’ll be damned if she gives those asshats a leg to stand on.

So yeah. When she retreats to the beautiful rooms assigned to her she shouldn’t have the time or energy to spare worrying and obsessing over Bucky. But it’s like loving Bucky is her body’s super power. Thanks, body. Super awesome, but you know, invisibility would have been cool.

The crappiest part? She knows that talking to Bucky would make her feel better about literally everything other than Bucky. He still has his shitty days, times when he’s surly. There are nights he can’t sleep and he Skypes, and they don’t really talk much.  
Sometimes he just hangs out there on the other end, while she collates data or works on a machine. Sometimes they watch TV together. 

She misses hearing him do the accents. How he wobbles his head back and forth and does duck face when he thinks someone is being pompous. And the way he snorts sometimes. See? It’s not fair, because the history books and Smithsonian had never said that Bucky snorts, and he certainly hadn’t been doing it back when they’d dated and him leaving the tower was an ‘ordeal’. 

She doesn’t know what he’d planned for his birthday this year. A night in again, or a night out on the town. Tony’s place in Malibu had been on the table at one point. 

Thor had proposed a toast to his shield brother on the day of his birth at the feast tonight. All Darcy could think as a couple hundred tankards were lifted into the air was how much of a kick Bucky was going to get out of it when she told him.

She turns at the soft chime, calling out an invitation to enter. Her door attendant steps into the foyer. “Fandral is here to escort you to the viewing party, Lady Darcy.”

Darcy spins in circle, looking for the shawl Thor had given earlier. It had silver threads woven through it to glint in the moonlight. She's supposed to wear it tonight, and then it's supposed to be one of the things she brings back to Earth with her, to end up in some kind of museum or collection. “I’ll be right out! Thanks!”

Spying the shawl on the chaise she grabs it and tosses it around her shoulders. She gets the feeling this is more of a soiree to see and be seen at, but it’s a meteor shower. On another planet. In a different sky.

“Milady, you look as enchanting-“

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Darcy cuts in, and Fandral grins. “Take me to the stars, buddy.”

She gets Thor to take a picture with his phone for Bucky. Her phone is more than likely going to be searched, and she’s not sure what she’s going to be allowed to keep. She’s not sure the bigwigs back on Earth even know Thor carries a phone regularly.

Darcy catches Odin watching as Thor attempts to get a good shot, and can’t quite decipher his expression. She’ll deal with whatever it is tomorrow during the portion of the daily counsels she’s permitted to attend so she can get an understanding of Asgardian government proceedings.

Tonight she props her feet up on Fandral’s legs so his many admirers will leave him alone, and leans against Jane watching foreign stars streak across the sky. When he’s ready, Fandral will set her legs aside and venture out in search of friendly company. For now, they’re in their own little group away from the others.

It feels nice. A little like home.


	7. April 9th, 2017

I have never let anything have this much control over me  
Cause I worked too hard to call my life my own  
Yes I made myself a world and it worked so perfectly  
But it's your world now, I can't refuse  
I never had so much to lose  
I'm shameless...shameless

 

April 9th, 2017

 

Darcy is in her bed at the palace. She has the curtains pulled tight, and had requested dinner in her rooms. She sore from taking a fall from one of the six-legged horses, and no one questions her. She’s also a little sore emotionally.

Fandral had almost laughed himself off his own horse when she fell, the ass. Darcy had attempted to dust herself and regain a little dignity _for Earth!_ , and then had quietly told him he’d just dealt the death blow to any chance he’d ever had with her, mostly teasing. Fandral had boomed out a laugh, tossing a friendly arm around her shoulders, and told her that Thor had already spread the good tidings that her heart belonged to another.

It had been kind of a punch in the gut. A lovely reminder that her messy relationship drama is playing out in front of all her friends and they all seem to know. Jane must have given Thor one hell of a look, because the smile had dropped right off his face.

Darcy had moved on. They’d been on an official tour, and a guy who’s name was really, really hard to pronounce (seriously, she’s spent several nights practicing) is waiting to show her the oldest tree in Asgard.

Now that she’s back inside the palace walls, she just wants to curl up have some down time. Her schedule has been jam packed with political events that have run the gamut from a royal ball and feast to some kind of hunt at dawn, from paying her respects to that awesome gnarled tree to touring just about every building she can see from the top floor of the palace. And then there’s the science. A night hardly passes that Jane doesn’t show up and drag her off to some library or observatory, and it’s all too good to pass up.

But Heimdall had been hailed by Steve, and Thor had gone to fight alongside the Avengers leaving Darcy and Jane in Asgard. Now she’s got the tablet Thor had brought back from Earth.

The tablet has a full charge and shows she has fifty-three messages. She presses play on the first one, from the day after she left Earth.

 _Hey doll. So you’re up there, which is kinda strange to think about. But amazing. Steve gave me the shirt you got me, as you can see.”_ Bucky leans back and motions to his t-shirt. _Anyway, wanted you to know I was thinking of you back home. Bye, babe._

Darcy scrolls down and sees that she has at least one message for everyday. Most are just really quick, saying he’s thinking about her. There’s a few pictures. One of Natasha and Steve standing in the ocean, Natasha’s arms around Steve’s neck. There’s another of Steve, Sam, and Bucky standing on a pier.

One of Clint hanging from a rope by the ankle, looking not amused.

And the last is of the pigeon that visits Bucky’s patio most days, eating a peanut.

Bucky’s birthday message is different. Most likely because he’s drunk.

 _Hey._ He’s in bed, head on his pillow, in very dim lighting. His voice is a little gravelly, like maybe he’s already been asleep. _So it’s my birthday. Natasha and Steve had Grigorio’s catered in, and Sam and Pietro brought back this Muria drink from New Zealand. It’s not fuckin around._

Darcy can’t help but smile at him.

 _I missed you tonight, Darce. Miss you all the time, but especially tonight. I hate not bein’ able to talk to you, hear your voice. I reach for my phone twenty times a day to text you something, send you a picture of something I see._ He shifts, turning on his side. Part of his face is hidden by his pillow until he punches it down. _An’ I was thinkin’, an’ I realized this is my first birthday since I came back that you haven’t been there. An’ how much that meant to me, an’ how you said it was so hard to see me after we broke up. I think that’s why I was drawn to you, you know? You’re so strong. It’s a shit world sometimes, but you’re still you. You still hugged Clint when he was being a moody asshole, you put up with Pietro’s shit, you make Thor smile, and how could I not want some of that?_

Darcy bites her lip.

 _First time I kissed you, I half expected you to push me away. First time I took off my shirt, I expected you to be disgusted by my arm. An’ when you told me you had feelings for me? It literally did not compute._ Bucky’s eyes glint in the darkness, and she can see he’s got stubble on his chin. She loves it when he has stubble. _It took weeks for me to process that, understand it. It wasn’t something I thought was in the cards for me anymore. Then I wanted it. I wanted smiles and kisses and holdin’ a dame's hand again and makin’ her laugh, makin’ her sigh. It was a part of me comin’ back._

 _I dream about the sound you make when I slide into you. Or the little gasp when I drag my teeth over your ear. But you know what else I dream about? Watchin’ Dr. Who with you, when you’d put your feet in my lap. That day we walked in the park, after picking up the vodka for Nat, and you made me catch you when you jumped out of that tree. Fuck, I love that woman for what she did for me back then. I dream about the way you used to smile up at me._ He sighs and rubs his hands over his face. _I miss the fuck out of that._

“Darcy?” Jane calls, and the bed curtain is pulled back. “I thought you might want to have dinner just the two...”

_Anyway, I should go. Shouldna said any of this. Miss you, babe._

“Darcy?” Jane whispers, but Darcy can’t say anything and she can’t stop the tears that are rolling down her face. “Oh, Darce.”

“Janey.” Darcy lets the tablet fall into her lap. The next video starts to play.

_Hey, Darce. I see I sent you a message last night. I hope I wasn’t too much of a meatball. If I was, maybe you can forgive me since it was my birthday? Sam and Piet brought this crazy drink, and apparently it doesn’t give a shit about super soldier metabolisms. Anyway, thinking of you back here on Earth. Everybody misses you. I’ve been conducting a study, maybe not up to yours and Jane’s standards, but I’m pretty sure the stars aren’t as bright while you’re gone. It’d make sense, with their two biggest fans gone. Anyway, not that I’m counting, but forty-seven days ‘till you’re back. See-ya sweetheart._

“That was cheesy.” Jane says, but reaches out and grabs Darcy’s arm. “Darcy, are you okay?”

_Hey doll. Just a quick one, we’re headed out to the summit in DC today. Supposed to be procedural bullshit. Think I’m gonna have to break down and join Tony’s group chat since you’re not around to keep me entertained while the asshats drone on. Thinking of you._

_Hi, Darce. Still in DC, I found this jasmine garden that you’d love. I’ll send you-_

Jane presses the pause button and takes the tablet away. “Darcy, what’s going on? Do you just miss him? Are you homesick?”

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, Jane.” Darcy says, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. Bucky’s frozen on the screen, mid-sentence. His hair is flopped down into his face.

“What you’re doing? Here in Asgard or with Bucky?”

“With Bucky.” Darcy lets out a last shakey breath, then wipes under her eyes. Her fingers come away blackened from her mascara. “I love him. I love him so much, but it’s the exact same as before.”

“What do you mean?” Jane motions to the tablet. “Were we just watching the same Bucky? He’s nothing like-“

“ _He’s_ not. I am, though. You were there Jane. I can’t go through that again, and I can feel myself right on the edge. Something about him makes me into a different person. And it’s not a person I like.”

Jane’s brows knit together. “I didn’t know you felt like that.”

“I was hoping it would go away.” Darcy confesses. “He wanted the chance to prove to me that it would be different, and I wanted him to do it. But instead of getting better, the feeling just keeps getting worse. I feel like I’m on a cliff, and it just keeps getting higher and higher.”

Jane takes Darcy’s hands in hers. “Let’s talk this out, okay? It’s fine. No matter what happens, it’s you and me, right?”

Darcy nods, because she’d said something similar years ago, when Thor left for Asgard again. Promising to be back. Again.

“Tell me about this person you don’t like. Because, Darce? I’ve always liked you. Always. Even when I was dragging your smelly self out of bed and into the shower. Even when you went through that stage where we had to go out every Saturday night.” Jane squeezes Darcy’s fingers.

“It’s just that I always know what I’m doing. I roll with the punches. But back when I was dating him, I did things that I never thought I would do. I put up with shit that looking back makes me want to kick myself. I was pathetic.” Darcy shakes her head when Jane opens her mouth. She needs to get this out. It’s been clawing up inside of her for weeks. Months. “And every time I’m on the phone with him? Every time I talk to him? I feel like a coward, I feel weak, I feel like an idiot.”

“But it’s nothing he’s saying making you feel that way, right?”

“ _No_.” Darcy moans. “He’s practically perfect. He’s been amazing. It’s me. It’s all me.”

“Darcy.” Jane says softly. “Darcy, look at me.”

“What?”

“You weren’t pathetic.” Jane says. “Not at all. You were you, that whole time. You loved him with your whole heart, the same as you do with everything else. You gave him your all. And that’s what makes you the person we all know and love.”

Darcy bites her lips hard trying not to start crying again.

“I wish you would have told me you felt like that. You were strong. You were so strong, being there for him. And you were strong putting yourself back together afterwards.” Jane brings her hands up to hold Darcy’s face in her hands. “And now? Of course you’re scared you’re going to get hurt again. And if you don’t feel like yourself? I would guess it’s because you’re going against your heart. And that’s not something you do.”

“So you think I should be with him again.”

“That’s not up to me. I love you if you’re with him, I love you if you’re with the man that wore the frozen banana costume on the beach in Baja. I just want you to be happy.”

“I think that was a lady.”

“Fine, I love you if you’re with the lady that wore the frozen banana costume on the beach.”

Jane pulls in the tray of food she brought, then props up the tablet and presses play again.

_-a map, maybe next time you and Jane are through you can see it. They had like fifteen varieties, and it smelled like you. Steve’s here, we’re goin’ to some place Clint found, so hopefully the serum holds up. ‘Til tomorrow, doll._

They get updates through the week in DC, through a small skirmish that leaves Bucky with a stitched up cut next to his eye, and a crooked nose. Both clear up within a few days. They see his tension rise, and then he tells her that they’re thinking about calling Thor, and if they do he’ll send up the saved messages.

The last message he looks so tense that Darcy has to reassure herself that Thor had told them that entire team was fine, with no severe injuries.

“Well, Darce? What do you think?” Jane asks, leaning back next to Dracy, propped up on the pillows.

“Uh, you expect me to make a decision now? On something that’s been brain tripping me for three and a half years now?”

“No, I expect you to tell me if you think there’s a possibility that I’m right. Because if not, I’m gonna have to be there for you in whole different kind of way.”

Darcy squints her eyes closed, so hard that eventually spots dance. “You know, I think I really kind of was counting on the distance to help me out with this. That I’d get up here and get a break from it, and I did kind of.”

“Can’t get much farther away from someone.”

 “Yeah, well the pressure kind of eased up. I had twelve weeks where I wouldn’t have to say anything to him, wouldn’t have to think and agonize over the right words. But it’s really just brought home how much I’ve already let him back in.” Darcy groans and sinks down into the covers. “I really, really miss him Jane. I was so focused on how shitty I felt about leading him on and making a decision that I didn’t realize how good talking to him makes me feel.”

Jane's smile is soft and understanding.

“And it’s not just that he’s always telling me how beautiful and amazing he thinks I am, which he does all the time. I mean, what? Is he even real? He’s a really good listener. And he totally thinks I can do anything.” Darcy smiles. “And he’s hilarious. A total goofball. Did I show you the video he sent me of him spinning Steve’s shield on one finger? Or the one where he was singing ‘So Fresh and So Clean’ while Sam and Steve were shaving in the locker room behind him? Oh, or the time he made the cat shaped pancakes with the whipped cream bow ties?”

“Yes, Darcy. You show me everything he sends you that makes you laugh.”

“Ha, not everything.” There might have been some funny but also sexy dance moves Darcy had kept to herself.

Jane raises a brow, but says nothing. She points to a folder at the bottom of the list of messages. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know. I figured it would be fun, so I saved it for last.” Darcy tells her, jabbing a finger at the folder labeled “Boss Ass Bitch”.

“Oh my god. Darcy, it’s a scrap book of the articles you’ve been in. I mean, it’s on the tablet, but still, he saved them all for you. That is the most adorable thing ever. I’m never going to be able to look at the Winter Soldier the same again.”

The first few articles are more of the same. Covering all of the political heads around the world huffing and puffing about an under-qualified American woman being the ambassador. They’re already more tame than they had been, given Thor’s no nonsense, hammer clutching explanation of his choice.

But then there’s an article in Marie Claire “ _about the woman behind the taser_ ”.

The picture she’d had taken at the Kennedy Space Station, another one of those government requirements for leaving the atmostphere, in a stupid flight suit she’d never wear again, is on the cover of the motherfucking New York Times with the headline “ _Lightning Sister, Star Searcher – Dr. Darcy Lewis, Ambassador of Earth_.”

“Oh my god.” Jane breathes.

Science Weekly has a picture of Darcy and Jane during a tour they’d given of their mobile lab a few years ago in Nevada, standing in front of their modded telescope. _Dr. Foster and Dr. Lewis – The Two Luminaries who Revolutionized the Study of Space Travel to Other Realms._

There are screen shots of Tumblr post dedicated to Darcy. There are rockin’ clapbacks – _oh, I don’t know, she has a bachelors in POLITICAL SCIENCE, started out as an intern and ended up space-adopted by the God of Thunder, Prince Thor, after she TASED him. She lived through two alien invasions, and helped end the second one, saving countless lives. And WHILE she did that, she got her MASTERS and then her DOCTORATE in astrophysics. But yeah dude. She’s just some girl who isn’t qualified._

Apparently she really, really should have locked down her social media before leaving. Some of those pictures really don’t need to be circulated en masse.

_Darcy Lewis: from Political Science Intern to Ambassador of Earth._

It goes on and on. And Jane is just beaming at the screen. Darcy sees people defending against stupid attacks about her fashion choices – apparently too casual and too young – to her choice to wear bright lipsticks – not classy or mature – from her degrees – coasted through on favoritism, obviously – to her romantic history in college – slut, promiscuous, is this who we want representing our world?

But she’d never cared what the blowhards said, and the people who are defending her? Damned if they aren’t using all of her favorite political science buzzwords.

If she’d been reading these things about anyone else she would have fist pumped and squealed and probably would have had a new idol. But they’re writing about her, and it’s a little bizarre. A lot bizarre.

And Bucky had collected them for her. And put the in a folder he named ‘Boss Ass Bitch’. Be still her heart. Which ha. Her heart had long since stopped listening to her, and when it came to Bucky it was pretty fond of fawning and swooning like an extra in Gone With the Wind.

Jane doesn’t look up from reading the article in the New Yorker, _Struck by Lightning! Why we think Darcy Lewis is the best thing to happen to US politics since that little revolt in Boston Harbor_ , at the light knock on the door _._

Darcy hears the door open and close, and knows by the lack of greeting who it is. There’s a guard outside her door at all times, some kind of gesture tied up in her status as an honored guest, and as Thor’s lightning sister which apparently is a Thing, meant she got a guard. It’s not so much a personal security thing, it’s a recognition of her standing. Jane has one too.

No one comes into her rooms, or even touches her door other than the guards. If someone wants to talk to Darcy, the guard knocks, comes into the foyer, which is short and opulent and positioned so that he or she can’t see into Darcy’s rooms, and asks if she would like to see whoever it was.

The only people who are allowed in without that whole routine are the two people she’d told the guard to allow access whenever. Even the king had to wait the one time he’d talked to Darcy outside of the throne room. Jane and Thor though, they have an all-access pass, just like on Earth.

“Lady Darcy.” Thor smiles when he sees her peeking out of her bed curtains. “I had hoped you ladies would allow me to join you.”

There is something lonely and tired about his expression. Darcy holds the curtain open. And it feels good, it being just the three of them again. She thinks Thor agrees, and maybe that’s why he’s seemed sad sometimes on this trip.

Home doesn’t feel like home so much for him right now.


	8. May 5th, 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is out of control. When I wrote it I wasn't planning on posting anything, ever, and wasn't paying attention to things like length. So it's a behemoth.

You know it should be easy for a man who's strong  
To say he's sorry or admit when he's wrong  
I've never lost anything I ever missed  
But I've never been in love like this...  
It's out of my hands

May 5th, 2017

 

The fanfare when they’d left for Asgard had been interesting. The president had been there, along with some delegates from the UN. A lot of astronauts had come to see them off. (And also to fangirl over Thor and or Darcy and Jane, but Darcy had been asked to refrain from calling it that by the director of NASA.)

People were in their military basics, suits, and power dresses. There had been a few tents set up to one side with refreshments, and a press box where thirty or so photographers were corralled to take pictures of the ‘historic event’.

Darcy hadn’t been able to spend as much time with her friends as she’d planned to. She’d gotten to hug everyone, and man had the cameras gone crazy when Steve and Nat hugged her at the same time, but even that was nothing compared to when Sam lifted her off her feet with his hug. (Darcy has a strong suspicion that something had been made of that – in the comments of some of the Tumblr pages Bucky had screen-captured for her she’d seen comments beneath some of the photographs of her, like how of course Sam Wilson is all about that, the man loves him some badass woman.)

The whole casual nature of the comments makes it seem like the idea that there might be something between her and Sam is pretty common, and makes Darcy feel like maybe there are some articles Bucky didn’t clip so diligently.

Yeah, so there had been fanfare. Polite, professional, formal-wear fanfare, where golf claps had been a thing and Darcy had just wanted to get on with it as sweat dripped down her back.

The fanfare when they come back to Earth though? There are roadblocks set up, and a mix of police and military make a human chain to keep the crowds back. While they’d left from the Kennedy Space Station, they’d decided to return at the scene of the Battle of London, in exactly the same place that Thor had touched down that day.

It had helped to appease the world outside of the US. With Thor being based mainly out of New York, and a US citizen being chosen for ambassador of Earth, it was a needed gesture.

And Darcy thought the people of Greenwich deserved it, after all they’d been through. There are helicopters and banners and confetti thrown from rooftops.

It is fucking insane, and Darcy is mostly surrounded by a security team that includes Steve and Tony in the suit. In between Tony’s quips, made funnier by his slightly robotic voice in the suit, and his affection, the suit’s arm around her shoulder is heavy, she’s introduced to the Mayor of London, the Prime Minister, and then several members of the military.

It’s a whirl, and there are other names and faces and hands shaken. She catches Wanda’s hand as the other woman passes, squeezing her fingers in greeting.

Tony manages to dance her past people who are brandishing clipboards of papers for her to sign, and someone else who approaches with a rolling cart full of metal boxes, who as Darcy is pulled away, introduces himself as Adam Jerrick from Customs.

Thor and Jane are already on the helicopter Tony is leading her to, and Darcy is glad they’re making an escape. She walks across the uneven grass in heels, and she’d made damn sure she looked good even if all she wanted was her pajamas and her Netflix, and she is bone-tired.

Steve hands her up into the helicopter and as she turns to thank him, she sees past his shoulder, past the crush of people milling around over the scorch mark the rainbow bridge had left, Bucky.

He’s in black tactical gear, and he’s running security. Nat stands next to him, and his head is tipped slightly down listening to something she’s saying.

“Good to go?” Steve asks, buckling her into her seat. He puts a set of headphones over her ears, reaching up to tuck her hair behind them. Then he pulls one side of the headphones away from her ear. “Glad you’re back, Darce!”

He slides the helicopter door shut and pounds on it, just like they do in the movies.

An hour later she collapses on a bed at the mansion Tony’s dad had kept in London and the moan that escapes her is near orgasmic. Had the beds in Asgard been comfortable? Hells yes. Had she missed beds on Earth starting at some point five weeks in? Yep.

Asgardian mattress were like some kind of voodoo water bed, without the water. They were filled with something that Darcy could only compare to wet sand, only it felt softer and glorious. But a girl could miss old fashioned springs and cushions if she wanted to.

She is out to the world in seconds, which might explain how she was transferred to a jet without waking.

It’s a bit of a surprise that the relief she feels at escaping a face to face with Bucky is the tiniest bit outweighed by regret. And maybe not an unwelcome surprise.

Even as she feels that out, the regret strengthens. Like by just acknowledging it, it tears down some of the walls she hadn’t been able to scale.

Which means that maybe Jane was right. Maybe the reason she feels like such a stranger isn’t because she’s getting closer to Bucky, it’s because she hasn’t jump tackled him yet.

That kind of rocks her world, and she stays curled up in her seat, wrapped in a blanket, and lets it percolate while she watches the clouds pass out her window.

An hour in she digs out her phone and powers it up for the first time in twelve weeks. And finds the rest of her messages from Bucky. She plugs in her headphones so she wont disturb Thor and Jane’s nap, and snuggles in.

She smiles when he smiles. She laughs when he laughs. Something warm and giddy and happy fills her.

 _Hey Darce. Thought you should see this. Wasn’t sure what to do, but I couldn’t let them think that way about you_.

Darcy straightens her in seat at the sight of a strained and uncertain Bucky. The video of him cuts out, replaced by a recording of him on Ellen with Steve.

Both he and Steve look relaxed. Steve’s arm is thrown up along the back of the couch.

“Note to self,” Ellen says, smiling, “Don’t play drinking games with the Avengers. It’s good I know now, because I was planning on inviting you guys to my birthday party, but that’s at least eighty percent flippy cup.”

“I’d say we’d take it easy on you, but we’re competitive.” Steve tells her with a grin.

“Okay, well, on a more serious note, you both said you don’t mind answering personal questions on the show.” Ellen says, and turns to Steve, “Don’t get me wrong. You and Natasha are my OTP. I have head canon where you guys eat ice cream on the couch together and watch Nicholas Sparks movies. Don’t tell me if that’s not what Wednesdays look like for you, don’t ruin it for me.”

The crowd laughs and cheers.

“Right?” Ellen turns to them, “I mean, how can we not ship them? Look at this.”

The screens behind her light up with a picture of Nat. She’s out in the city next to Clint, in line at a food truck. They’d both made the photographer and stare straight back. Nat is in a pair of well-fitting, well-worn jeans and an obviously too large t-shirt tied at her hip, with Steve’s shield on it.

The crowd aws.

The picture changes, and now it’s Steve running in Central Park with Sam and Bucky. Steve is wearing a skin tight black shirt with the red widow spot on the middle of his chest.

The louder aws make the tips of Steve’s ears turn red, and Bucky motions to them, grinning. The crowd’s laughter grows when Bucky reaches over to scrub a hand over Steve’s hair, leaving it tousled.

“Just so everyone knows, they wear those shirts and bunny slippers during movie nights.” Ellen says, as if it’s a fact.

“We do.” Steve agrees, rallying a little.

Ellen gestures to him with both hands, but then turns to Bucky. “So, my OTP aside, there’s been a lot of talk about your dating life.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” Bucky responds. “People been talkin, Stevie?”

“Maybe a little, Buck.”

Darcy can totally see why Maria sends them out to do press together. Bucky and Steve are gold together. Of course, Bucky and Sam do pretty well too. Steve is a favorite, but not in the way Bucky is. Bucky is fucking charming, and it seems the world wants to be charmed.

The world loves Steve’s troll tendencies, but damn did they eat out of Bucky’s palm.

“A minuscule amount, really. I had to really dig to find anything for the show.” Ellen says dryly. “Seriously though, everyone’s got an opinion, it seems like.”

Bucky shrugs his shoulder, seemingly completely uncaring of that fact.

“Some people think it’s really romantic.” The screen behind Ellen flashes on again, and now it’s showing Ellen on a couch wrapped in a blanket, a box of Kleenexes clutched in her arms, and a tv screen in front of her showing Bucky answering the pushy reporter at the New York Memorial Gala. “What? Get that off there, oh, look at that. That’s me and Thor. We hang out.”

It’s a picture from when Thor had been on Ellen a year ago and they’d gone to Six Flags. They’re both holding giant cotton candies and are wearing capes made out of the curtains on her set.

“You do?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, duh. I mean, I’m sorry man, but he totally said he’s going to name his first kid after me. I told him he didn’t have to do that, but you have to admit, Ellen Lee DeGeneres Odinson sounds good.”

“It’s a strong name.” Bucky agrees.

Ellen laughs and shakes her head. “I love it when you guys come on the show. I really do. But, what I wanted to know, is what you think about some of the people who are weighing in. There are people who are upset on your behalf, you know.”

Bucky shrugs. “I can’t help that, and I don’t particularly care. There are a lot more important things to be upset about.”

“Like the Dodgers.” Bucky and Steve say at the same time.

“Yeah, I heard you guys still weren’t over that.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve huffs as he and Bucky both shift on the couch, muttering under their breath.

“There are people that think your mystery lady is holding your past against you. Psychologists have weighed in, on if this is an unhealthy fixation for you, on someone who is unattainable and who won’t forgive you.”

“I don’t really care for the opinion of psychologists I’ve never talked to.” Bucky says. “And she’s never held my past against me. Even back when I did. The truth is that maybe she does need to forgive me a little, but not for anything I ever did as the Soldier.”

Darcy has to loosen her grip on her phone as she watches him. He’s surrounded by people and cameras and she can see that he’s slightly uneasy.

“She was there for me in the beginning. Gave it her all, helping me get better. There were surgeries where they weren’t sure what they were gonna find when they opened me up, things HYDRA had put in, there were therapy sessions that left me feeling like a monster, there were the hearings on if I was a prisoner of war or a war criminal.” Bucky glances over when Steve shifts, straightening in his seat. “It wasn’t the best time, and she was a rock. Then when things started getting better, it was kind of everything at once.”

“So you two were together once before?” Ellen asks, leaned forward.

“Don’t think I’d call it together, not the way it shoulda been. We were supposed to be. But I did let her slip through my fingers, broke her heart. She got the raw end of the deal the whole time I was healing, and then when I started to get better, there was this tunnel vision.” Bucky shakes himself, and his eyes become a little more present. “You know I’m a big supporter of veteran’s rights and mental healthcare. I had to put myself first then, even if at the time I didn’t see that as what I was doing. I don’t regret that I did, but I do regret that it hurt her.”

Darcy can see Ellen coming to terms with that. She wonders if the woman had any idea of what Bucky was going to say, or if he’d just sprung it all on her on live television. Steve is the one that steps up to fill the quiet in the studio before it becomes awkward.

“People should know to disregard anything ‘a source’ or consult says in the media. Especially when it comes to psychology or therapy. Those people are held by doctor-patient confidentiality, and anyone making judgements without knowing the people involved literally has no idea what they’re talking about.” Steve relaxes back into the couch, and Darcy can tell, because she’s watched him try to project calm and ease in all of those waiting rooms, that he’s doing it on purpose. “We care about both of them, and we wouldn’t let anything unhealthy continue unchecked.”

“Well, that’s a lot of new information for them to chew over.” Ellen says. “A lot of people thought you didn’t know her, Steve.”

“I would have loved that woman solely for what she did for Buck back then, but she was there for me too. Didn’t know me very well, and I wasn’t fit for company, but she ran interference so no one bothered me during the surgeries, made sure I ate, held my hand, made me shower.” Steve shrugs his shoulder, like it’s every day masculine men confess to needing people on TV, to being emotional messes. “Plus she once went toe to toe with Tasha for me, when she thought Tasha was doing me wrong.”

“She did?” Bucky turns to face Steve, ignoring the studio, smiling in pleased surprise.

“Yeah, and when Tasha explained things they ended up playing poker with Pepper.” Steve looks out at the audience and back at Ellen. “We’re not supposed to tell anyone, but you guys can keep a secret, right?”

The crowd cheers, and the hushed moment slips away. Steve Rogers is magic. And a troll, because Darcy knows what’s coming.

“Buck’s girl, she’s a damn card shark. It came down to her and Pepper, and there was quite a few drinks involved, and now when you see Tony out in the Mach 23, he’s actually only borrowing it, since it technically belongs to Buck’s girl.”

Bucky throws back his head and laughs.

Ellen starts saying something, but the video cuts out, and instead she sees Bucky again, staring back at her.

 _"So, I wasn’t really plannin’ on all of that comin’ out. And if one of Tony’s people from the med floor talks about who was with Steve in the waiting rooms back then, it’s not gonna be hard for them to put things together."_ Bucky rubs his hands over his face. _"Tony says they’ve all signed iron-clad contracts, but Nat says it’s pretty unlikely it wont leak. I shoulda thought of that, but people had been sayin’ shit for a while, and I couldn’t let it go."_

 _"You’re gonna be back in a week now, an’ they’ve already started setting things up in Greenwich. They’ve got a week long festival goin’, an’ free entrance to the London Space Museum and Astrological Society. I’m headin’ over to check on the security for the arrival, an’ I figure I’ll stop in. See what’s what. Wear my NASA shirt, represent_." Bucky gives her half a grin.

The last nine messages are all a little off. She can tell he’s worried. He keeps her updated on the media frenzy that follows the show. A few of his exes are interviewed, all saying he’d never mentioned anything to them, that he’d been a great date, one alluding to certain things he’s very talented at. One says she’d always known he was only half there with her.

Helen Cho is briefly the center of a media storm when someone reports that she’d dated Bucky back then. Steve makes a statement that the intrusion into Dr. Cho’s privacy was massively inappropriate, and that she’d never been romantically involved with Bucky.

The media reps seem slightly ashamed after being chided by Captain America, and the rest of the live broadcast goes fine.

It promptly becomes a mad house when Pietro lays a hell of a kiss on her, and Steve throws his hands up and stalks away. (Bucky tells her the GIF is trending with the headline _Captain America Can’t Even_.)

The only return to the flirtatious, outlandish Bucky she’d grown used to was her second to last message, in which he’s obviously recording with his phone. He looks down at it, like he’s holding it in his lap, and waggles his eyebrows.

Then the camera is turned around and she sees the inside of the quinjet. He walks forward slowly, and she can start to hear voices.

Sam and Clint’s voices.

“What?” Sam demands, sitting in the co-pilot seat with a sandwich in his hands.

“What do you mean what? Bird bros before other bros, Nat, Wanda, Maria, Pepper, Jane and Darcy.” Clint says, in the pilots chair. He leans forward to flick a few switches, and Darcy sees he’s not wearing his tac gear. They aren’t on a mission.

“Dude.” Sam says, shaking his head even as he extends his hand so Clint can take a bite of the sandwich. “That was bad. Anyway, we can’t call it the Nest.”

“We can’t not call it the Nest.” Clint says around what sounds like a full mouth. “What is that?”

“Sriracha chickpea paste. Is it too much?” Sam asks, peering down at the sandwich.

“No, man. It’s good. We should have sandwich stuff up in the Nest. Give me another bite.” Clint tips his head towards Sam. Bucky clears his throat just as Clint is biting down.

Darcy cracks up at the expressions on Clint and Sam’s faces as they slowly turn.

Sam tracks the camera and flinches. “Aw, man.”

“What do we have to give you so that no one sees this?”

“I’d take the rest of that sandwich.” Bucky’s voice comes from behind the camera.

“Aw, sandwich, no.” Clint says as Sam sighs. “Deal.”

Bucky leaves the cockpit and turns the camera around. He speaks around a mouthful. “Suckers.”

Soon enough she’s clicking on the last message.

 _"Hey gorgeous. As you can see, I’m still in London. This thing has really gotten out of hand, so I’m stayin’ on to help with security. So you might see me tomorrow, but I’ll be keeping pretty busy. Tony and Steve are gonna take care of you, and Pietro and Clint are gonna be on Jane and Thor. The rest of us will be around."_ Bucky is in bed, leaning against the headboard. She recognizes the room he’s in as the room Tony had given him at Stark Manor. Bucky had given her a mini- virtual tour the day he’d arrived in London. _"Tony’s been worse than normal. Nat thinks he got close with you when he kept flying out to help you with your mechanical engineering degree and he misses you. It’s hard to say, he doesn’t do friendship like anyone else I’ve known."_

He gives her a close-lipped smile. _"Anyway. This time tomorrow we’ll be sharing the same atmosphere again. Don’t know if I’ll get to talk to you tomorrow. I hope I do. I’ve missed you like hell, baby. I really hope I do. But if I don’t, I want it on record how happy I am to be breathin’ the same air as you again."_

Darcy watches all of them over again, barely finishing them by the time they set down in New York.

They’re at loose ends. Jane is considering moving back into her lab in the tower full time, and she wants Darcy there with her. Tony has offered Darcy her own lab, with all of the equipment she could ever dream of. He’d also sent them the schematics for Stark Mansion in the Poconos, with a proposed observatory addition.

It’s a short twenty minute flight by quinjet.

But Darcy’s got an offer to do a six month gig in Alaska, and she’d planned on accepting the offer. It would have been a good way to let Jane take a break from the road, guilt-free.

Jane is ready to be with Thor full time again. New York is home, and Jane is ready to be home again. There’s a whole top-of-line lab waiting for her in the tower anyway, getting dusty.

The residential floors are quiet. The others haven’t returned from London yet. Darcy lets herself into her old suite again, and looks around. The place is like a time capsule. Untouched while she’d been away. The things she’d left behind had been the things that reminded her of Bucky.

Darcy finds the picture again. The one of her and Bucky.

If Jane is right, and if what Bucky, and Steve, and Thor have all said is true, Darcy hadn’t been an idiot.

Her heart hadn’t been stupid and gullible and weak. If she trusts all of them, and if she trusts herself, she’d chosen right. She’d chosen the right person, and that person had just needed time. It had been ugly and hard and fucking heart-breaking, but maybe not wrong.

And if she’d loved Bucky then, it’s nothing compared to what she feels for him now. For the man who winks at her, who has a hundred different smiles and they all make her toes curl. The man who makes her feel like it’s okay to jump off that cliff, because he’d never, ever drop her.

Something breaks free in Darcy’s chest, and she feels like she can breathe again. She actually laughs out loud, it’s such a wonderful relief.

She feels like herself again. She feels strong and smart and ready to take on the world again. And she knows what she has to do.

“Jarvis?”

“Yes, Ms. Lewis?”

“Can you arrange a flight to Alaska for me? The Everson Research Institute in Fairbanks. As soon as possible.”

“Of course, Ms. Lewis. You can leave within thirty minutes.”

She’d been talking with the head of the institute for months before she’d left for Asgard. She can’t just bail with a quick email.

The entire trip takes thirty-one hours. And that’s mainly due to ten hour flights both ways, and then when she crashed after her meeting and ended up sleeping in the researcher’s quarters. (When she says crashed, she means crashed. Look, intergalactic travel, topped off cross Atlantic travel, topped by nation-spanning tavel can tire a woman out. So she crashed, suddenly so tired she can’t stop yawning, she’s leaning against the elevator wall, and she forgets that the seats in the quinjet recline.)

She still has hope, based on what Jane had told her about the others’ travel plans, that she’ll beat everyone back to the tower.

That hope is retained until she’s in the elevators. There are glass doors, so she sees each floor as she passes it. And she sees just a flash of a human form with broad shoulders on Clint’s floor.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, Ms. Lewis?”

“Who is in residence?”

“You are the last permanent resident to arrive today.” The AI informs her.

Well, shit.

“Permanent resident? Tony still has us categorized as permanent residents?” Darcy asks, even as her mind races. She should have left a note. She should have slept a few more hours and made important decisions after that. Obviously Jane is rubbing off on her.

“The last resident to have their status changed was Sergeant Barnes. He was added as a permanent resident on February 2nd, 2014.”

Okay, one Tony is a giant softy. He just opened his tower to all of them, and left it that way. All this time she’d felt so lost, she could have shown up here and have been granted every comfort. And two, Tony is a giant softy. A giant, lying softy.

He hadn’t “accepted” Bucky as un-brainwashed until April. Darcy remembers, because things were tense as fuck and for a while there, Thor had been uncertain about leaving to take care of things back home because he didn’t trust team relations while he was gone.

Supposedly he hadn’t been convinced until Darcy and Jane accompanied Thor to meet with Bucky at a neutral location and Bucky had charmed the pants off Darcy. (Not literally. She waited to drop trou until a few months after that.) And that had happened in March.

Not that anyone knew, because that was Tony’s way, but if Bucky had been in trouble and had come to the tower, he would have been admitted.

Darcy resolves to give Tony a hug whether he wants it or not.

“JARVIS, where is Sergeant Barnes?” Darcy asks, shifting from foot to foot. She’s kind of warm in her Research Institute sweater. (Why yes, she had taken off for Alaska in her return from Asgard clothes and had to borrow clothes. Please see: Sleep Deprivation & Poor Decisions, a memoir by Darcy Lewis.)

“Sergeant Barnes is sleeping in his suite.”

“Oh.” Disappointment filled her. “Uh, how did he seem before he went to sleep?”

“Sergeant Barnes was uninjured.”

“I meant, did he seem upset?”

“I apologize. Sergeant Barnes seemed agitated, but his behavior did not in any way require intervention.” JARVIS answers. He’d been tasked with monitoring Bucky’s behavior when he first came to the tower, and would alert Steve or Sam if anything seemed wrong.

“Does he still wake up at six?”

“That is his routine.” Jarvis responds, and Darcy fights a shudder. Bucky doesn’t need as much sleep as an average human. He’s like Steve that way, some side effect of the serum.

Darcy knows from Nat that Steve can sleep a full eight hours a night, and even seems more even-tempered for it. But Bruce had studied both Steve and Bucky. They don’t suffer the same effects from sleep deprivation as average humans do. In fact, they were able to go two full nights without sleep before any marked decrease in decision making.

Back when they’d been together, she’d never had to worry if he was still asleep by the time she hauled herself out of bed. And she could trust that he would be awake if she was just getting out of the lab after six.

“JARVIS, take me to the lobby. I’m going to go grab some breakfast.” She feels the elevator change direction smoothly. “Sorry and thanks.”

“It’s no trouble, Ms. Lewis. And might I say that I am glad to see you back home?”

“It’s really good to be back, J-man.”

The city is pink in the dawn around her. Darcy sticks one earbud in her ear and puts something a little breathy and acoustic on. Her shoes on the sidewalk, the newspaper stands, the other people – it all seems especially crisp and grounding.

She’s back on Earth. She’s shaken off her uncertainty and fear and indecision.

When she arrives back at the tower, to-go bags are cutting into her fingers as she rides the elevator back up to his floor. Everything had shuffled around, outside of Darcy’s suite. It had remained the same, but Steve had moved in with Natasha on the floor she’d once shared with Clint. Clint and Wanda had moved into a new, higher floor. Sam had moved into Wanda’s old suite on the floor she’d shared with Pietro.

So Darcy knows the hallway, and knows the door. She’d stood outside of it many times, hoping Bucky would come and let her in like they’d planned. Sometimes Steve had come to say it wasn’t a good day. Sometimes no one had come.

“J-man, is he-“

Darcy cuts off as the door slides open in front of her. She stands still, a few feet away. She can see the navy floor runner that had been there before, and the legs of a side table that had not. There are a pair of worn running shoes near the door, and a hoodie hangs on a hook.

“Ms. Lewis?” JARVIS’ tone is politely inquiring.

“The door opened. Is he awake?”

“You are one of Sergeant Barnes’ open access visitors.” JARVIS responds. “Along with Captain Rogers.”

“Huh.” Darcy says, edging a bit to the side to see further in. The couch is different. It’s charcoal gray and longer than the old one. Boxier too. Masculine. The TV is bigger, and there are floor standing speakers on either side of it. His jasmine plant sits on a stand near the patio doors, healthy and much larger than she’d expected. “And Bucky? Where is he?”

“Sergeant Barnes is in the shower.”

“Because you told him I was bringing him breakfast?” Darcy asks hopefully.

“JARVIS, take me to the lobby. I’m going to go grab some breakfast.” Her own voice is played back to her.

“Yeah, okay. So I didn’t clearly state my intentions.” Darcy admits, going on her tiptoes to try to make out the albums hanging on the wall. She recognizes several, including her Rumors album she’d missed like crazy but hadn’t been able to ask for it back.

“Can you arrange a flight to Alaska for me? The Everson Research Institute in Fairbanks. As soon as possible.” Her voice comes over the speakers again.

“Okay, Jarvis, I get it. Geez.” Darcy wiggles her fingers as the circulation is cut off by the handles of her to-go bags. “My communication skills sucked today. Er, and yesterday. But now, I’m telling you to tell Bucky that I’m on my patio, and I’ve got breakfast. And please give him access.”

She just doesn’t feel comfortable letting herself into his apartment, making herself at home. It feels presumptive and entitled, especially given the way she’s kept him at such a distance these past months. Nearly a year.

Hell. It’s been almost a year since she’s seen him in person. It had felt like a long time, but the same part of her that had enabled her extreme procrastination in college had helped her to not take note of how much actual time was passing.

She grimaces at the dead plants tucked into the corner of her patio, near the hammock she’d strung up. There’s a hell of a spiderweb stretching between her Saturn and Venus party lights.

The patio furniture requires a quick wipe down, and she grabs her broom to sweep really fast. She can’t find her dust pan, which why would she pack her dust pan and not the broom???, so she leaves the pile of dust and twigs and leaves pushed into the corner with the dead plants.

She’s drinking her coffee and staring at a pigeon, wondering if it’s Bucky’s pigeon, when Bucky speaks behind her.  
“Last time you brought me breakfast you were tryin’ to give me the boot.”

Darcy turns in her seat, finding him in a pair of slacks and a t-shirt. Just like that day, his hair is still wet.

“Tell me you’re not giving me the boot, Darce.”

“I’m not sure I could give you the boot if I wanted to.” She says, speaking honestly. It’s strange being here with him again.

The times in her suite had been few and far between, but often they had been the best times. On bad days, he didn’t leave his suite with Steve. Which left good days for out in the rest of the tower. And the best days, he could maybe be convinced to come to her suite. To watch Dr. Who, maybe share a blanket.

Towards the end, he’d gotten better about physical affection. She’d even spent a few nights with his arm around her on the couch. Back then she’d had to be careful. Make sure she didn’t make some stupid quip and step in it. Make sure she didn’t move too quickly. No loud noises when he couldn’t see her.

“Darcy.” He says, bringing her back to the present. Where his eyes don’t dart around, checking the corners and windows and surrounding rooftops and then the corners again.

He comes forward a few steps, then hesitates.

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way, Buck.”

He studies her for a second, then moves his jaw like he does when he’s upset. She’s seen it a hundred times on Skype after a shitty mission, after a fight with Nat, after Steve’s done something stupid but he’s about to forgive him.

“You came pretty damned close last time.”

“Mmmm.” She really, really wants to hug him. She’s ached to hug him a thousand times. Probably more. When she’d fallen for him while they were fuck buddies, while they’d dated, after he’d broken up with her, and since he’d started trying to win her back. Countless Skype calls when they’d each been in bed, and she’d needed to feel his arms around her. So she stands and steps into him, wrapping her arms around his middle.

His arms come around her immediately. Warm and tight.

“Buck, I couldn’t do it then, and now I love you even more.” Darcy confesses, blood rushing in her ears, her skin over-sensitive, her brain cataloging everything. His smell, how he feels against her, how soft his t-shirt is against her cheek.

His arms tighten and he seems to curl around her a little bit. “Too tight, Bucky. Too tight.”

“Please let me kiss you, Darcy. I need to kiss you.”

“Please kiss me whenever you want, and also a few extra-“

Kissing Bucky steals the world away. It always had, and she’d almost managed to convince herself it was because his kisses had been so hard to get, so fleeting and rare and – whatever, it’s not true.

Kissing Bucky is the best. No one else compares.

Their breakfast goes cold on the table and she ends up sitting on the railing. It’s thrilling to have the drop at her back, to have him at her front. Risk, safety. His metal arm stays curled around her back, keeping her secure, and he stands between her parted legs.

The invitation for Bucky to join the others for breakfast that comes an hour later is ignored.


	9. March 14th, 2018

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just a baby epilogue. (There are no babies. The epilogue is small, especially compared to that last chapter.)

I'm shameless, shameless as a man can be  
You can make a total fool of me  
I just wanted you to know  
I am shameless  
Shameless  
Shameless...

March 14th, 2018

 

“No, nope. That’s it, I’m done. I’m out.” Darcy says as the helicopter sets down on the roof of Avengers Tower. 

“Ms. Lewis, we really should-“

“No, Eliza, we shouldn’t. We’ve got all of this nailed down, we’ve talked about every contingency, if we talk this into the ground any further we’re going to have to apply for some permits in China.” Darcy tries very hard not to let her frustration show. 

Diplomacy. Her life is all about diplomacy now. Plus, she wants to be able to shake this conversation off when she ends the call. “And it’s the weekend. I told you I’m going incommunicado for this entire weekend.”

“It’s been on the schedule for months.” Mel breaks in. “And we’ve got everything in hand. If there’s anything new, you contact either Thom or me, Eliza.”

“I suppose. It’s just such a big deal. Minister Janssen feels very strongly-“

“Darcy, we’ve got it from here. Have a good weekend.” Thom breaks in.

“Thanks everyone. I’m gone.” Darcy lowers the phone and jabs the off button. Then she takes several deep breaths as she unbuttons her blazer and whips off the blue silk shirt she’d worn under it. 

Leaving her in a worn v-neck Hollies shirt that’s Bucky’s favorite because of the way the fabric clings and how stretched out the neck is, and a black pencil skirt. Perfect for the birthday celebration taking place a few floors below.

The party is at what once was Bucky and Steve’s apartment, and then was only Bucky’s, and now, after the last week, is Bucky and Darcy’s apartment.

Although they haven’t been in it at the same time yet. Jane, Thor, Sam, Clint and Wanda had helped her move her things over while Steve, Bucky, and Pietro were on a mission. Tony had sent a fruit basket and a mostly not helpful DUM-E. It had been plants and throw pillows and bright rugs and silly posters and so much music and her hammock and a thousand other things zipping up and down the elevators. 

Darcy had left on Wednesday after spending one night in his bed, which she’d made up with her girliest bedding. Serves him right for pestering her about moving in together for the past few months.

She’d expected a call or text or tweet or reaction video or something when he’d gotten home last night, but there had been nothing.

The co-pilot, Wyatt, holds up a hand to help her down. Wyatt and Bev are her standard pilots/security team. She hopes they never leave her because finding a team that is US government approved is hard enough, but then they have to be Stark vetted, and then, the hardest test of all, Bucky approved. 

“Have a good weekend, Ms. Lewis.”

“You too, Wyatt. You know, in your separate rooms, doing separate things, fully clothed.” Darcy says, checking her phone for any new messages. Wyatt says nothing, but Bev winks. 

She’s excited to get downstairs. It’s only been a week since she’s seen him, but she’s missed him. They do everything they can to keep their time apart to only short periods. He’s gone to Asgard with her twice now, and most of the times she travels earth-side, he’s with her. (Thor comes too, and Jane complains that nothing is as simple as the old days, when she and Darcy slept in the research van instead of having to find hotels or rental homes, spending weeks at a time out in the desert or up in the mountains. Darcy reminds Jane of the distinct lack of orgasms during those times, and Jane shuts up.)

The roof access door opens when she’s a few yards away, and there he is.

“Heya roommate!” Darcy calls, even as her heart goes all wonky in her chest over him. She hopes that never goes away. 

The slow grin he gives her is her very favorite one. He meets her halfway and picks her up, wrapping his arms around her tightly.

“Best present ever, doll.”

“Well now, you haven’t seen what I’ve got on under this Buckaroo. Take it from me, you’re speaking too soon.”

“Oh yeah? That so? Whaddaya got there?” He tries to tug the neck of her shirt out, but Darcy clamps her hands over it.

“You’ll just have to wait and see. But I’ll give you a hint. It’s blue, lacy, and has such pretty, pretty bows.”

“I fuckin’ love you.” Bucky says, abandoning his attempts to get a peek down her shirt to kiss her. 

“Hi Sergeant Barnes.” Wyatt says as he squeezes past them, long used to this kind of behavior. 

"Happy Birthday, Sergeant Barnes.” Bev says.

“You know what I was thinking?” Darcy asks him, tangling her fingers in the hair at the back of his neck. 

“What were you thinkin’?” Bucky asks against her skin, his lips making a trail down her jawbone.

“I am pretty sure,” Darcy says, voice wavering a little when he nips at the skin just under her ear, “that you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, birthday boy.”

His arms tighten around her, and Darcy feels like she’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've got a couple options for things I might post later, not continuations of this. This one was finished before I started posting, I just had to go through and edit. I'm in the same boat with a few other fics, since I've been lurking and writing forever. Thank you again for the great welcome to posting!


End file.
